Tuesday, February 28, 2012

President Newt Gingrich: The conservative insurgency– draft for The Hill on 2/28/12

Hill commentator Dick Morris on a recent Lou Dobbs show was asked about the primary outcome: Mitt Romney wins Michigan and then goes on to sweep Super Tuesday and wins the nomination. He beats Obama and is elected President in 2012.

Makes sense. But Laura Ingraham, who brings intuition to her take, said Tuesday morning on Imus, if Romney wins Michigan, look for a Gingrich insurgence on Super Tuesday. In a word, Gingrich will finally have commandeered the insurgent’s role, taking it finally from Santorum (and Perry, Cain, Bachmann and Paul). And since Sarah Palin was named VP by John McCain in 2008, conservative culture has been in a grass roots insurgency; it is an authentic insurgency in search of its Trickster and that could well be Newt Gingrich.

Intuitive, in my estimation as this race has been influenced by two factors; one, the rise of a garden variety of new ideas and all candidates besides Romney can be seen as proponents of some kind of new thinking; some of it strange (Santorum) some of it lucid (Paul). This calls an end to the conservative tradition if there ever even has been one to end. Two, the “establishment,” a phrase I first used primarily to call on the Bush family apparatus featuring Chris Christie and Jeb Bush, including the Weekly Standard group, featuring Fred Barnes as representative (who first pitched Christie/Jeb Bush 2012), is not really a tradition so much a mainstream power/influence group and they have shown great reluctance to get behind the obvious manager here, Mitt Romney. I can think of no other reason why they opposed him other than the fact that he is a clear thinker and smarter than they are will not be lackey to their initiatives and agendas as George W. Bush was. This has left the field open to the insurgents.

This could be a fatal mistake for the Republicans because without mainstream support behind Romney and with the wicked, perverse and subversive wish for a brokered convention in which Christie and Jeb Bush would emerge, it sends the weight instead to whomever can consolidate the varied publics behind the “new people”: Perry, Cain, Bachmann, Santorum, Gingrich, Ron Paul and throw in Sarah Palin. Who would be the single combat warrior to oppose? Newt Gingrich. And bring back Rick Perry as VP.

In a more spooky vein, it is interesting that Gingrich brought up the Lincoln/Douglas debate as with Gingrich it has always come to my mind in my Southern experience the Simon Legree type or archetype; those from elsewhere who come to the South and love it too much. And Obama brings Lincoln to mind considering that Obama fulfills the third goal of the Lincoln era: The first goal to prevent Southern secession, the second to free the slaves, the third to bring egalitarianism between white and black. Obama v. Gingrich in debate does indeed suggest Lincoln v. Douglas; the ghosts of Lincoln and Douglas.

When history finally completes its purposes, it tends to move on. Is it possibly to see Gingrich winning a debate with Obama? Entirely. And thus the presidency? The country has been in a fever these past two years. Absolutely.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Scotland, England, USA: One world

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/27/12

I knew the Sixties was over when the hippies started staying home to watch Upstairs, Downstairs. In our time we are staying home again to watch Downton Abbey. It seems a lesser tale than that narrated by William F. Buckley, Jr. of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited in 1981. Another recent offering, The Tudors, today goes to our beginning: Which strong force will dominate? That of the Catholic wife, Catherine, and her daughter Mary? Or reformer Anne and her daughter, the Protestant monarch who institutionalized the modern world, Elizabeth I? These shows are longings which arise when we face uncertainty. And when we do we return to England.

When the gods fail us we warn of collapse and look for return passage. So often these past 100 years that which seems to be collapsing has been Europe. But England’s journey is its own. As Fareed Zakaria reports in The Post American World: “Niall Ferguson has argued that the British Empire is responsible for the worldwide spread of the English language, banking, the common law, Protestantism, team sports, the limited state, representative government and the idea of liberty.”

The English-speaking places and not “the West” form their own natural states and cultures whether it be called a civilization or not. It seems really a great, motley, mutated tribe which can find its collective beginnings in myth and antiquity in the reign of Earth Mother prehistory (See Robert Graves, The White Goddess).

World War II proved to us that we would at last rescue in the nick of time the English speakers, Australia and England. The portal opened and the walls between us fell then and the Beatles could thereafter pour down the plane at JFK without interference as no others outside our borders could. With Churchill and John Lennon we united with our psychic ancestor with whom we had divided at the Revolution.

John Browne, Senior Economic Consultant to Euro Pacific Capital Inc, a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher and of the old school, recently made a good recollection on Cavuto. Should England just leave the Euro zone and team up with America, asked Cavuto? It has long been moving in that direction, said Browne. In the Johnson administration he said it was suggested that the British Isles join America as four states.

Something culturally akin to that might be looked at now as Scotland desires to separate. A problem with this desire for separation and that sought by Vermont and Texas as well is, where you gonna go? Autonomy is the real issue and it is a healthy desire. But we are in our realm together and apart by degree and that is as it should be. A looser arrangement of states and regions in an Anglosphere might be considered in all of the places where we share the same language and cousins and folk tales, ritual holidays and bedtime stories for our children.

England is our old mother; an old dream of Mrs. Brown. Adele, Chef Ramsey, McCartney, Dr. Who, Frodo, Harry, Professor McGonagall, Downton Abbey and even William and Catherine, who visit occasionally and feel at home here, seem to bring us incrementally closer. Anglosphere is our natural path, the Tao of the English-speaking people, and we will get there over time whether we chose to go there or not. We are already there.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Falling Apart

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/26/12

Russia without Putin, England without Elizabeth, America without Kennedy and Bush. We are people of personalities and archetypes and when they go, the age goes. As it did with Jefferson, with Victoria, with Roosevelt. Wisconsin is right to plan for its own future with schemes of coining its own cash as Ron Paul suggests. Vermont and Texas and Scotland ready to go alone as well. Kansas seems about to roll and Alaska never quite fit. Arnold Schwarzenegger had some good ideas for California and saw it as a great, rising city state. Sadly, no one else did. Maybe there really is no California. Maybe it is all just an idea. Then they all go home to New York and New England. Because that is the big problem in America and the world: Mistaking ideas for places. Places – Texas, Quebec, Russia, Scotland – remain. Ideas – U.S.S.R., Britannia and the U.S.A. they are saying now – are made of air. And that Rick Santorum wants to be president is sure sign of the end times.

His is a classic of recently arrived ethnic people like the Santorums and Quigleys; here but not quite here yet. It is the classic American ethnic tale told in “The Sopranos” and the masterly “Miller’s Crossing”: “Up is down. Black is white.” We crossed the water with JFK. Now they go back across the river. I have four kids. Had I listened to Santorum I’d have 28, one for each year of marriage. That practical people listen to him represents a shattering of conservatism and potentially a shattering of America. They really don’t.

But when Elizabeth and Phillip go as invariably they will, and Kennedy and Bush and the current batch of pop stars, I see an auspicious Age of Catherine rising just ahead. An age in which the Anglosphere has found its natural edges for the first time which it may not breach. It is here already and it is an auspicious beginning for England, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. And the suggestion that Canada team up with Russia at the North Pole, suggested by scholar Michael Byers in the most creative of foreign policy journals, “Global Brief,” is also interesting: The world allied for the first time in line with the North Star which may have been God's purpose from the first. It would be a cold, new Jerusalem. Everything changes. It is the law of all things.

And there seems to be a natural bond in the cold places through hockey; places even as far away from Boston as Vancouver. Natural relationships seem to run across and above the 44th parallel. It is cold up here and you have to live by the head to survive each winter. Things come more easily below and there you are free to live in the heart. A better life no doubt, but not ours.

And football is the defining mandala which since post-war has shifted the axis of America to places like Wisconsin and Texas and Indianapolis. America is finding its true center in the middle. It is a step forward in time from the baseball era; the Civil War era when it was all about New York and Boston. No more. Pretty much ended when they shut down Toots Shur’s.

England falls, Israel rises. No heaven, no country, no religion too. Only football keeps us together. And warfare. Our world today is a donut. In the middle we play football. Around the edges they play soccer. But that will change as well as everything changes.

Friday, February 24, 2012

If Romney loses Michigan . . .

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/24/12

A marketing pattern has occurred in Presidential races now, following Reagan then Romney: If you want to be President you should run twice, the first time for practice. It seems to be going well for Romney who knows how to do things. But all hangs on the Michigan primary, in which Santorum and Romney are in a virtual tie.

If Romney loses Michigan it will indicate that the Republican party has lost its taste for management and governance and has gone over to ideology, marginal religious factions and regional eccentricities. That means, it has come to the end of things and a new party needs to develop. This may not be a bad thing. Jon Huntsman has said as much but he brings no new thinking to the table. Ron Paul does and he carries with him substance. The Pauls bring substance and good ideas but the eccentrics in this race (Gingrich, Santorum, Bachmann, red necks like Herman Cain, others in the wings) represent birth pains and a repudiation of America’s globalist path since Wilson.

A Romney victory with bring needed stability. In my opinion we have not had a stable presidency in 20 years and have afflicted the world with political neurosis. Romney is a stable politician; a family man and a personal man. He is not married to ideology as the others are. He is not a maverick. He is not “born again” anything. He has always been the same and can trace stability and strength in his family for generations. His choice for VP will not come from art or sociology. His work history shows that he will chose the individual most suited to the job. The safety and progress of America demands it now. My guess is he will choose Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell.

But if Romney loses Michigan America will fall in a malaise. And in 2016 we will see a motley batch of contenders giving it their second try; the one that really matters to them. Some of them have been depending on an Obama victory in 2012 which raises questions of character. Rick Perry has already implied that he intends to run in 2016. Certainly Gingrich will run and Michelle Bachmann and Santorum and probably Cain. And of course Jeb Bush and sidekick New Jersey governor Chris Christie, which might be considered the pre-Enlightenment team as their vision of governance precedes that of Elizabeth I. But Mitt Romney will not be running.

The only other post-Enlightenment, post-Jefferson, post-Second World War, post-Elvis candidate with a practical vision of America will be Tennessee Senator Rand Paul. His vision and that of his father’s is right and sensible. It is a coherent vision which responsibly challenges the orthodoxy, and opens to the future as did Martin Luther’s challenge to Roman governance. It may well be suited to America in the future, perhaps the near future. It will develop in time to maturity. Perhaps a hundred years, and it will invariably require a revolution. That is what the eccentricity in this race means: It is prelude to a revolution.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

A non-Western representative for World Bank chief

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/20/12

When Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew brought his country from Third World to be the most prosperous country in the First World, he first had to deal with the West: “I had to come to terms with American power without a British buffer,” he has written. “The British enforced their will with a certain civility. The Americans were different, as I could see from the way they dealt with South Vietnamese leaders . . .”

Lee was likely referring to the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, president of South Vietnam, in 1963, but as the World Bank chief position opens up again today, it might be asked if, in Lee’s words describing that period, America still had “bulging muscles and a habit of flexing them.”

Possibly more than any other global body World Bank has become pretext for what is called NGO imperialism. And like the Academy Awards “life work” awards, it has come to glorify an individual once the diva has become irrelevant. Hillary Clinton, who during her run for the presidency, said she had no use for “elitist economists,” is contender today and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and former Treasury chief Larry Summers have been suggested.

Traditionally, the Bank president has always been a U.S. citizen nominated by the United States. But The Manila Bulletin reports that China, the world's second-largest economy, wants the next World Bank president to be selected on merit, “going against a tradition that dictates the bank's head is an American.”

The Economic Times agrees that a non-American should take the helm: “The world might have changed dramatically since 1945 when the Bank was established, along with its Bretton Woods twin, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) . . . China is now the second-largest economy and emerging economies account for close to 55% of world GDP measured in terms of purchasing power parity. But, for the Bank and the Fund, it is as though nothing has changed. The result is the unwritten pact between the US and Europe, that has seen Americans at the helm of the Bank and Europeans at the Fund, continues to hold sway.”
The emerging economies, they write, especially the Brics, must come together on this and agree on a candidate from amongst them.
If World Bank and the IMF are not to go to the way of the court of Louis Quatorze, and the arbitrariness of appointments like those of the universally despised Paul Wolfowitz to World Bank and the prancing French aristocrat Dominique Strauss-Kahn to IMF suggest they are heading in that direction, they should try to rise to relevance.
Harvard’s Niall Ferguson reported recently on Bloomberg that had it not been for China, we today would now be in a Great Depression. It seems a relevant observation, but denial of Asian economy and power rising and having already arrived seems still the dominant theme in these appointments.

Legendary investor Jim Rogers, who lives in Singapore, complains that there has never been a Nobel Prize for economics given to an Asian working economist, in a period when the rise of China and the other Eastern economies is the economic story of the century.
Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew may be seen as this age’s sage and master. And Hu Jintao’s China brought stabilization in a time of global turmoil. The appointment of a non-Western chief would bring Americans psychological acceptance of the rising century and bring status and relevance once again to the World Bank.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The century hangs on Michigan: Ron Paul/Judge Napolitano 2012?

by Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/21/12

"I love the Lakes," said Mitt Romney. I do as well and I've never heard someone else who had returned back east say so. I considered the Midwest with the same patronizing condescension that is imprinted on us New Englanders, but after a few years in Ann Arbor I fell in love with the Great Lakes. Camping under the stars at Rabbit Blanket above Lake Superior with the family I felt we'd come to the center of the world as Native Americans see the Lakes and it's life spirit, Manitou. Then when we came back east it seemed almost wrong to do so but duty called. And Romney was governor then of Massachusetts. I came to admire him for these things which no one else seemed to notice. He would seek the simple things and find there substance and strengths. Next week, if Romney wins Michigan, he will sweep the series.

And he will be chosen against Obama because of this: New England and the Northeast goes through periods of meandering and psychological weariness: The Franklin Pierce presidency, cursed from the first, allowing Frederick Douglas to bully them just as Gingrich does today. They chose then Lincoln for strength. Then again the Lost Generation between the wars, they chose FDR for strength and ability. Then the Sixties and Seventies, creative in their awakenings like meanderings, but turning at last to strengthen again with Reagan. We are in such a period now. People don't choose then “left” or “right” in times like this, they then choose necessity of organizational ability and management. They choose survival. And we will choose Romney.

Romney will bring a legacy and 12 years of strengths and a new order and a new vision of America from east to west if he wins Michigan.

But if he loses Michigan it all drifts apart. If Santorum beats Romney on his home turf and in Arizona as well the Super Tuesday votes could go in three directions; Romney, Santorum and Gingrich, with Ron Paul taking his niche. It brings a brokered convention and anything can happen. Commentators fear it and pitch the old school; Jeb Bush and his front man, NJ Governor Chris Christie. Always the same. But Sarah Palin will surely enter as well because of this formula: If Jeb Bush, then Sarah Palin. And she could well consolidate that new strong force rising – Tea Party, Constitutional conservatives, “common sense conservatives,” state sovereigntists and Tenth Amendment advocates, and there is a good chance of it. Conservatism has bristled with creativity these past three years. Ron Paul has suggested Judge Andrew Napolitano for his vice president.

Ron Paul it appears could consolidate with Romney. They like each other and have personal substantive issues in common – family and the private man first - so Romney could skate through.

Romney/Paul brings the new century and so would Romney/Nikki Haley. Palin/Rick Perry brings a new century as well. Christie/Bush brings the last century again. And the century hangs on Michigan and the Great Lakes.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

A China representative for World Bank chief

By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 2/20/12

The World Bank chief position is opening up again. Possibly more than any other global body World Bank has become pretext for what is called NGO imperialism. And like the Academy Awards “life work” awards or the Nobel Prize at the end of a life’s work, it has come to glorify an individual and her realm once the diva has become irrelevant. Hillary Clinton, who during her run for the presidency, said she had no use for “elitist economists,” is contender today and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and former Treasury chief Larry Summers have been suggested. Traditionally, the Bank president has always been a U.S. citizen nominated by the United States. But The Manila Bulletin reports that China, the world's second-largest economy, wants the next World Bank president to be selected on merit, “going against a tradition that dictates the bank's head is an American.”

This next World Bank chief should come from China or Singapore.

The Economic Times agrees that a non-American should take the helm: “The world might have changed dramatically since 1945 when the Bank was established, along with its Bretton Woods twin, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) . . . China is now the second-largest economy and emerging economies account for close to 55% of world GDP measured in terms of purchasing power parity. But, for the Bank and the Fund, it is as though nothing has changed. The result is the unwritten pact between the US and Europe, that has seen Americans at the helm of the Bank and Europeans at the Fund, continues to hold sway.”

The emerging economies, they write, especially the Brics, must come together on this and agree on a candidate from amongst them.

This calling up of agents of passing realms, Clinton, Geithner, Summers and Wolfowitz, tends to drag down the entire industry. If World Bank and its dark twin, the International Monetary Fund, are not to go to the way of the court of Louis Quatorze, they should try to rise to relevance. Harvard’s Niall Ferguson reported recently on Bloomberg that had it not been for China, we today would now be in a Great Depression. It seems a relevant observation, but denial of Asian economy and power rising and having already arrived seems still the dominant theme in these appointments.

Legendary investor Jim Rogers, who not long ago moved his family from New York City to Singapore, complains that there has never been a Nobel Prize for economics given to an Asian working economist, in a period when the rise of China and the other Eastern economies is the economic story of the century.

Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew may be seen as this age’s sage and master. And Hu Jintao’s China brought stabilization in a time of global turmoil. A proxy for Yew’s Singapore of Hu’s China should be sent. Such a position would bring Americans psychological acceptance of the rising century and bring status and relevance once again to the World Bank.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Is there life after "All my children"?

After 41 years, America's archetypal folk tale, the soap opera "All my children" will be cancelled. In the Taoist outlook, this soap opera might be considered the “smooth but common stone” which is the essence of a culture. It is always despised by scholars and critics but held on to by the real people. Can America survive without it? Not sure. Not only that Myanmar prophecy thing which says the world comes to an end this year, but the Elliot Wave as well. I couldn't help to notice that two years back Japanese banks started turning in their dollars. Because the Elliot Wave currency theory, which claims that dominant currencies run in an arc, suggests dollar dominance will receed in 2012. Because the Elliot Wave says the dominant currency has a 41-year life cycle just like "All my Children."

Watching the breathless interviews on Bloomberg TV would go far to create the impression that it is all about money, and so far none of the men in bow ties have acknowledged my theory that economy and culture run together or two aspects of the same thing and the correct model of understanding would be Buddhist prayer flags, which rise in a cycle to fertility then wealth in a golden age and back again to death or the in-between. But economist Harry Dent comes close. It is all about demographics he says and he has been saying so for 20 years.

And right now the demographics don't look so good. I am 65 years old, the front line of the war babies. I've bought six houses and maybe a dozen cars and trucks since All my children began. This year my spending goes to a broken foot because when you are 65 and fall down walking your dog, you break things. I'm lucky. Some of my generational friends are dead already. They will not be spending either.

Economic collapse is a symptom of cultural collapse. It can be graphed in demographics, and a collapse like this compared to for instance Katrinia, always marks itself generationally. The second and third posh-war generations watched All my children. The fourth don't get it. They don't even watch television.

Economists need a word for wu chi. Creative destruction , a psychological term, has worked its way into the lexicon and well explains how why Toots Shor’s famous bar would go out of business when generations shifted in interest in Joe DiMaggio to Joe namouth. Everyone changed and economy rose with the new generation. But wu chi is the end of all things, a time waiting again for the beginning. It is lucky and pozo holding the rope and it is now, at the end of the third post-war generation.

Wu chi brings no Joe Namoth or Bob Dylan to bring on the next generation. People are not sure who they are or where they belong. They are not even sure what sex they Are. That is wu chi. Paris between the wars was such a place. Two great books, twins light and dark, came out in 1925 and 1926, hemingway's the sun also rises and fitzgerald's the great gatzpy. They marked the end of everything in America that had been built with false money and false words. A third book, mein kamph, belongs in that group because it promised a war to bring the end of everything and surely it did. So by 1929 when the economy collapsed, it should have been expected. It took a long time to get going again; 1953 with Elvis, and took a head of steam in 1971 with the rise of the dollar and all'y children.
The middle rose then to its epex. Now it yields.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Adele: The world begins again - draft

Before I came to this the work I did consisted of looking at the world as pictures without words: The Beatles rushing down the stairs together at JFK, Neil Armstrong on the moon, Salvador Dali's 1943 painting of an American messiah climbing out of an egg and another same year in a football helmet, Emanuel Gootlieb Leutze’s painting of Wasington crossing the Delaware, Holbein’s full portrait of Henry VIII which signified the beginning of our age. They form patterns and tell the inner story of our passage. One such photo occurred this week at the Grammy Awards. A sensational iconic photophraph taken by Matt Sayles of AP of Lady Gaga standing alone in the audience, looking mournfully to the left. It has that same quality of James McNeill Whistler’s “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1” of a woman remembering something lost. Lady Gaga has dressed herself in mourning and like Whistler’s mother she appears to be mourning for an age passed. Mourning for herself.

Generational historians Strauss and Howe (Spengler for dummies) write how history can shift in a few hours and this event was one such evening. I'm usually the last to know about these things because I live in the woods and wait until my kids tell of the world's turnings, but as the Sayles picture dramatically suggested an age receding, there on the front page of the WSJ was an image of the world beginning again: A video clip of Adele singing “Someone like you.” I was fairly new the song as my young daughter had been playing it gently on piano all year, but had never heard it by Adele.

Bob Dylan once said that every changed when he first heard Odetta perform on one of those early Sixties folk music programs. I'm old enough to have had that experience as well. But back then it was also humanly possible to be the only one or two white listeners to Ester Phillips in the quiet black clubs of Chicago night. They were gentle American secrets where you could smoke through the night in bliss with only a handful of others. There were as I recall no awards then which is why the creatively is pure and organic. With awards, thereafter the Mad Men would come looking for the next Ester or Odetta or Nina Simone and the next Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen. It began in caves in the night in Chicago at 4 am with only four people left. It ends at a football stadium in the middle of the afternoon with 100 million people watching. Until you had marketed copies 60 years through the generations until it got to Madonna and Janet Jackson and at the very end a copy or a copy of a copy. And that which was once a song is now only a shout; until you get to lady gaga and that is what she was mournfully looking back through window upon window.

But when I heard Adele it was as if I was there again at the creation in Chicago where the world first began. There again at the beginning with Little Ester.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Sarah Palin, Andrew Jackson and the "nostalgico" political elements

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/15/12

Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of The Washington Post, has an instructive essay this week on the different camps that divide progressives: “You could call it nostalgia liberals versus accountability liberals,” he writes. “The priorities of nostalgia liberalism are community, social cohesion and preservation of New Deal and Great Society programs. Accountability liberals put more stock in market forces and individual empowerment. Their debate is sure to sharpen over the next four years.” Joe Biden vs. Elizabeth Warren maybe.

It is an instructive essay in viewing the critical breach we have entered as all turnings of life-changing proportion are conflict and contention between the “nostalgicos” – the phrase from Spain in the 1930s when she experienced a life-ending crisis - and the new generations; in a word, it is a generational struggle between defenders of the old temple and the builders of the new. These changes reach to the mythic core of the human condition; they are issues of death and rebirth like those described by anthropologists such as Sir James George Fraser. We have entered such a breach. Both parties are now experiencing this division and so is the country.

I did a radio interview out west last night on this as commentators had read an essay I wrote here about a division among conservatives between the “traditionalists” – the radio commentator called them conservatism’s “gentry establishment” (nostalgicos) - represented today by NJ Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and the new spirit of independent-mindedness rising in the heartland manifest especially by Sarah Palin and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

This I’ve been calling Jacksonian as it brings precisely to America the spirit force which rose in the west with Andrew Jackson. This was apparent from the first with Gov. Palin and the attacks she received from the geist; mainstream conservatives and liberal punditry and especially those essential keepers of the cultures in the night; Tina Fey, David Letterman and so many others. Jackson, like Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, ran their contests against “the establishment” meaning Washington, New York, the “nerd prom” (Palin) and with phrases like, “I don’t care what they think in New York and Washington,” (Perry). Jackson’s race, like Perry’s and Palin’s, pitched frontier vs. Boston and Richmond.

“His passions are terrible,” said Jefferson. “I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place . . . He is a dangerous man.”

In this long, strange, primary season conservatism is experiencing a creative breakup. Conservatives are torn between nostalgia and new awakening. It will serve them well in the future as they are getting there first and this metamorphosis will rise through the new century. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them lose the 2012 election as Obama is a smooth and likeable character and fulfils a long-fought historic destiny for America. And mainstream American feels as comfortable and natural with him today (59.7% at Intrade) as it suddenly does with Adele.

But Palin, like Jackson, represents a new beginning and so does Rick Perry, who suggested this week that he expects to run again in 2016.

Maybe he will run against Jacksonian Democrat Elizabeth Warren. This Okie grandmother who knows how to bake a special Valentine-day cake and can probably do anything country people can do, suddenly brings us nostalgia-prone New Englanders out of our torpor in giant steps.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Why are Tibet’s nuns dying? Who is the Karmapa?

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/14/12

The International Campaign for Tibet reports: “News has reached ICT from Kirti monks in exile in India of the self-immolation today (Feb 11) of an 18-year old Tibetan nun, at around 6 pm in Ngaba. This is the third Tibetan nun to set fire to herself since the wave of self-immolations began inside Tibet in February 2009, and the second from her nunnery, Mamae. The nun has been named as Tenzin Choedron, a nun at the Mamaeconvent in Ngaba.”

It brings heartfelt response from Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Frinley Dorje, known to Tibetan Buddhists who honor the Dalai Lama as the 17th Karmapa. Karmapa is a sublime young man who is said by some to fill the shoes of the Dalai Lama when he passes on. The Dalai Lama is 76 years old. His comments from the International Campaign for Tibet:

“Having been given the name Karmapa, I belong to a 900 year old reincarnation lineage that has historically avoided any political engagement, a tradition I have no intention of changing. And yet as a Tibetan, I have great sympathy and affection for the Tibetan people and I have great misgivings about remaining silent while they are in pain . . .

“Reports have just emerged that three more Tibetans set themselves ablaze within a single day in eastern Tibet. This comes shortly after four Tibetans immolated themselves and others died in demonstrations in Tibet during the month of January. As tensions escalate, instead of showing concern and trying to understand the causes of the situation, the Chinese authorities respond with increasing force and oppression . . . I pray that these sacrifices have not been in vain, but will yield a change in policy that will bring our Tibetan brothers and sisters relief . . .

“I call on the authorities in Beijing to see past the veneer of wellbeing that local officials present. Acknowledging the real human distress of Tibetans in Tibet and taking full responsibility for what is happening there would lay a wise basis for building mutual trust between Tibetans and the Chinese government. Rather than treating this as an issue of political opposition, it would be far more effective for Chinese authorities to treat this as a matter of basic human welfare.”

Sunday, February 12, 2012

A brokered convention: Jeb Bush vs. Sarah Palin

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/13/12

Santorum’s contraception boom – “We’re all Catholics now,” said Mike Huckabee – won’t hold up. Because we’re not. This race could well go to a brokered convention. If Jeb Bush is proposed, so Sarah Palin should be proposed minutes later. She is now and always has been the singular Jacksonian voice in the original Tea Party phenomenon; the only one who can bring it to the mainstream. Her absence from the primary race has left a vacuum and no substitute has been found. Every other possible or potential leadership hopeful has risen and receded in this long Republican primary season.

But as The Hill’s Josh Lederman reports from the CPAC conference, the former Alaska governor received far-and-away the most spirited and enthusiastic reception at this convention of about 10,000 conservative activists. She drew the audience to its feet more than a dozen times during her keynote address on Saturday.

“The cheers for Palin were so loud that they drowned out her remarks again and again,” he writes. “Conference organizers had to set up three overflow rooms to accommodate the throngs of supporters eager to hear her words.”

The Bush secret agenda has been a subliminal theme for months with NJ Governor Chris Christie as the favored proxy and pitch man. At CPAC it broke through to the surface: Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, says that Republican turmoil might lead to a brokered convention in which Jeb Bush would emerge as a “possible alternative” party nominee. It made Drudge this weekend.

Conservatism is at the shore of a new awakening but is afraid to cross the river. It goes back to Texas Governor Rick Perry’s Texas primary race. From Quigley’s “Pundit’s Blog” January 21, 2010: “The Austin Statesman reports that former President George H.W. Bush will endorse U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor in her race against Rick Perry. Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Margaret Spellings and Karen Hughes [W.’s agent] also support Hutchison . . . But Sarah Palin supports Rick Perry and will appear with him at a rally on Super Bowl Sunday. Does one Sarah Palin equal a Bush, a Rove, a Spellings and a Hughes? In Texas, I believe it does.”

Perry won in a landslide. But why would the Bush establishment pull out all the stops to support Hutchison, who was sure to lose? Because they saw a new conservative movement building with Perry and Palin and were determined early on to stamp it out. They still are.

Bush/Christie or Christie/ Bush as “establishment” representation is bound to bring muffled chuckles (“Hey Abbott!!!”) and Obama would win in a landslide. But Bush/Christie vs. Sarah Palin/Rick Perry positions coming head to head at the Republican Convention would pit the storied worlds of Dexter and Paulie Walnuts; the most notoriously corrupt, burned out, busted up, used up, dangerous, underwater and broke eastern states, against the new, independent, states-oriented, freedom-seeking Constitutional conservatives like Palin of the western states, Texas and Alaska. Now that would be interesting.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

A brokered convention: Jeb Bush vs. Sarah Palin rough draft

by Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/11/12

Donald Trump asks how can Rick Santorum be running for President? It is like someone who just flunked out of high school and now wants to apply to The Wharton School of Business. Because something today is missing in the center of conservatism that is driving people to the edges is why. And because Santorum is handsome, young and in 2011 still thinks like a 70-year old man in the 1950s. This is now the "back to the future party" which is making it a magnet to the strange and the miscreant. A related problem: At least half of Republicans today can think of nothing but Jeb Bush. The center hopes to destroy all new growth and default to monarchist dynasty. Why now they are born to lose, why the bitterness and bile and viral nihilism at CPAC 2012, and why Obama rises this week to 64 % at Intrade. The Republicans want a young and handsome politician who reminds them of themselves when they were 12. And Jeb Bush, dutiful son, presents the pristine paradigm.

The Bush secret agenda has been a subliminal theme at the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. At CPAC it breaks through to the surface: Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, says that Republican turmoil might lead to a brokered convention in which Jeb Bush would emerge as a “possible alternative” party nominee. It made Drudge this weekend.

Conservatism is at the shore of a new awakening but is afraid to cross the river. It goes back to Texas Governor Rick Perry’s Texas primary race. From Quigley’s “Pundit’s Blog” January 21, 2010: “The Austin Statesman reports that former President George H.W. Bush will endorse U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor in her race against Rick Perry. Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Margaret Spellings and Karen Hughes [W.’s agent] also support Hutchison . . . But Sarah Palin supports Rick Perry and will appear with him at a rally on Super Bowl Sunday. Does one Sarah Palin equal a Bush, a Rove, a Spellings and a Hughes? In Texas, I believe it does.”

Perry won in a landslide. But why would the Bush establishment pull out all the stops to support Hutchison, who was sure to lose? Because they saw a new conservative movement building with Perry and Palin and were determined early on to stamp it out. They still are.

Santorum’s contraception boom – “We’re all Catholics now,” said Mike Huckabee – won’t hold up. Because we’re not. This race could well go to a brokered convention. If so, after Jeb Bush is proposed, so Sarah Palin should be proposed. She is now and always has been the singular Jacksonian voice in this movement; the only one who can bring it to the mainstream. Her absence from the primary race has left a vacuum and no substitute has been found. Every possible challenge now to the alternative or “anti-Eastern establishment” position of liberty, Tea Party and Constitutionalism has risen and receded.

Bush/Christie or Christie/ Bush as “new establishment” representation is bound to bring muffled chuckles (“Hey Abbott!!!”) and Obama will win in a landslide. But Bush/Christie v Palin/Rick Perry positions coming head to head at the Republican Convention would pit the storied realms of Dexter and Paulie Walnuts; the most notoriously corrupt, burned out, busted up, used up, dangerous, underwater and broke eastern states, against the new, independent, free-seeking western states, Texas and Alaska. Now that would be interesting.

Friday, February 10, 2012

JFK: The barbarian king

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/10/12

What have I become? – Nine Inch Nails

In hindsight it might be seen that the most treacherous moment, well described in David and Julie Eisenhower’s “Going Home to Glory,” was when Eisenhower tentatively handed over the keys to John F. Kennedy. 50 years later the Kennedy legacy continues to descend. But what I found most revealing in Mimi Alford’s memoir of our most auspicious beginning at war’s end was in The Washington Post’s Reliable Source column. The part about the partying at Bing Crosby’s house in Palm Springs, where JFK urged her to try amyl nitrate (“I was his guinea pig”). It brought to mind the food testers in barbarian regimes hundreds, thousands of years back.

But these events to which Alford speaks, which should now include Dave Powers, whose job it says was “to find her an abortion doctor when she briefly feared she might be pregnant,” and my own Boston family should by now be considered the twisted aberrations of an ethnic political cult. The wanton sexuality inspired a generation and legitimized similar behavior in the Clinton period. In America, what’s good for the white glove Boston gentry is good for trailer park. And 20 years hence when more Clinton stories come out, that will be considered a cult as well.

These new accounts by Alford reveal nothing new. They tell us what we as people united only by war and football have come to accept and to some degree, they tell us what and who specifically have poisoned us. For we have become used to the neurotic, the obscene and the squalid and have come now to accept it and to universally be part of it.

We in Boston then were probably most concerned with the war between Catholics and Protestants that we’d engaged in these first hundred years since we got here and which still echo today in Kennedy v. Bush. But it is worth going back to the beginning and the great Canadian production “The Tudors” will bring a short cut. Contention first rose between the Catholic wife, Catherine of Aragon, and the next one, the Protestant reformer Anne Boleyn, and this would shake the world these 500 years.

Eisenhower’s America was well beyond it; he was from the plains, Kansas and Texas, and turning it back to Catholic and Protestant families of Massachusetts as compatible as Angry Birds seemed curiously a step back in time. Now with JFK it becomes clear that we had not transcended the Tudors contentions and the struggle of Henry and his good friend Charles, Duke of Suffolk, to rise above barbarism.

The need, and the need in all of history that is good, is to manage the barbarism. That is what all the current vampire stories are about. The sexual escapades of Henry VIII actually draw sympathy in this, in the first days of the English-speaking people just leaving the forest. Those of JFK and Clinton do not because there was no struggle.

But what is striking in the first episode of “The Tudors” is when Henry takes a mistress right under the eyes of his wife Catherine. Before they plunge into the bed he asks her face to face: “Do you consent?”

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Dark dreams of Chris Christie

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin takes up the cri de coeur of New Jersey governor Chris Christie who, despite his conspicuous displays for Romney which materialized virtually the day after the Bush-family coup to displace Romney with Christie fell apart, is really running for President himself in 2016. It is dispiriting that none of the GOP presidential candidates can hold a room like Christie, she says: “But perhaps the winner will go to him at the end of a long, bloody campaign and say, ‘I need you. The party needs you. The country needs you.’ And if he accepts, then whatever the outcome of the presidential race Republicans would have something to cheer and an extraordinary politician to watch.”

The second establishment dream, Christie/Bush 2016, not far from the first (Romney/Christie 2012), has it that Obama wins in 2012 and the Republicans can get back again on automatic pilot with Christie/Jeb Bush in 2016. Kind of extraordinary when you think about it: Patronizing the Massachusetts Mormon so distasteful to the main line establishment to line up the proxy in 2012 to run and win in 2016. Better maybe they lose in 2012. For sure then it is Christie/Jeb Bush in 2016.

But the first dream is not yet shattered: Christie in a brokered convention.

Is there no more imagination than this in American conservatism?

I can think of no real purpose for Newt Gingrich and think he is half crazy. But so was John Brown. Possibly only Gingrich can rally the masses on the margins against the inevitable gentry establishment.

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Jefferson vs. Obama: The rise of a revolutionary generation at CPAC 2012

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/8/12

The most important thing that has happened in the last two years is that the states have discovered that they don’t have to do what the federal government tells them to do, I said to a small group of New Hampshire mountaineers one year ago this month. It is one thing to say this in school basements before a few handfuls of New Hampshire’s hill people where “live free or die” can be seen tattooed on the forearms. It is expected of us. But when the same sentiments are presented at the button-downed CPAC 2012 convention in Washington, DC as they will be tomorrow, something different is happen here. Liberal commentator Pat Goddell has suggested that the Tea Party these past two years has brought us to a “pre-revolutionary “state. For the last two years libertarian Ron Paul has been the overwhelming favorite of conservative’s rising generation at CPAC. This year CPAC 2012 features a film produced and directed by Jason Rick exploring the history of state nullification, its constitutional legitimacy, and how states can use nullification to push back against the encroachment of federal power.

“Nullification: The Rightful Remedy promises to be the most comprehensive documentary on the subject of the Tenth Amendment and nullification, the long-forgotten tool that Jefferson considered our best defense against the Federal Government’s unconstitutional usurpation of power,” Rink said. The full-length documentary is presented by the Foundation for a Free Society and the Tenth Amendment Center will debut at 5:30 p.m. in the Citizens United CPAC Theater.

Nullification and separatism are not just for New Hampshire hillbillies and Texans anymore. The left wing “Counterpunch” reported that at a recent symposium at the Yale Political Union 45% of the participants voted to dissolve the United States. But original thinking that will bring new ideas to action takes longer and requires a revolutionary generation. The folksy Tea party has fallen away in influence, blocked out perhaps by its own roar. But it is safe to say now that the young coming to CPAC these past few years will identify with these issues and constitute the life force that could formulate a new republic: A new age of Jefferson.

Rand Paul, Rick Perry and Sarah Palin are all confirmed speakers at CPAC 2012. They have all spoken to the issues of states rights, sovereignty, and the Tenth Amendment. But the Republican primary season most strongly suggests that real change is at hand. Separate wins by Santorum, Paul, Gingrich and Romney in different places imply that different regions today legitimately want different things. It is fair to say that this represents a maturation of the American regions. They have developed different natures as natural states evolved here in time and one size no longer fits all. That is as it should be in time as Jefferson suggested.

Saturday, February 04, 2012

Mitt Romney, Bob McDonnell, Nikki Haley: A new conservative order

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/4/12

“One size does not fit all" was the catch phrase I used in my early complaints and Romney first used the phrase publicly. He was clearly suggesting a change in format and a historic change of outlook. Truth is, it was only after the Tea Party event at the Alamo that state and regional autonomy became a real and advancing possibility. So when Governor Romney suggested early on that his Massachusetts health care plan go national he was merely advancing it from the “initiative state” of Massachusetts to the vast generic, continent-wide model of governance, the only way ideas had come to practice in the U.S. since 1865. But after the nation-wide, grass roots Tea Party uprisings of April, 2009, a more practical and efficient system tailored to regions and states became a real possibility. Nixon had tried earlier to regionalize but the model he used was ineffective as it did not follow the natural cultural contours of America and the timing was all wrong. But Romney could see now that the times had at last changed enough to mobilize a more creative and efficient management model. Provided that leadership had the prodigious management skills that he has.

Watching Romney in Massachusetts and at the great Winter Olympics event that he ran in 2002 you could see that he knows how to fix things and he does this by ignoring prejudices, ideology and the set ways in which things were always done before: Instead, by focusing zen-like on the thing itself that needs to be fixed and ignoring everything else.

The initial offerings of the Tea Party have been lost in conservatism’s recent long day’s journey into the night. (Was the Gingrich scam all along geared to make Newt Rick Perry’s VP?) But Romney stands apart. Of the original Tea Party others, so do governors Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Bob McDonnell of Virginia who came to position in the original Tea Party wave.

Romney has always been more a westerner than a New Englander but he has certainly certified himself as a New Englander as Governor of Massachusetts. If he brought in Haley or McDonnell for VP we would have our traditional north/south break. But we would also have an east/west break with Haley and McDonnell representing the east and Romney who comes from western generations in a 100-year-journey representing the west, a binary more suited to the times and the centuries ahead in a future which looks across the Pacific as well as the Atlantic.

Our American journey to date is prehistory; prelude to a great awakening. We have been a north/south country for 200-some years and still lag there psychologically, but demographics have since WW II made us essentially east/west. And could well remain an east/west country now for a thousand years.

Friday, February 03, 2012

The Tao of Wesley K. Clark

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 1/3/12

Read this morning with interest an interview with Harvard’s Steven Pinker in “Global Briefs” titled, “On the State and Future of Violence” in which questions were asked like “How violent is the today’s world?” Not much, the answer. For which we are all grateful. And as much as I have appreciated Pinker’s outlook for what it does, his interview brought to mind Francis Fukuyama famous essay with the fairly astonishing title: “The End of History and the Last Man” in 1992. Which, if I recall correctly, was extended by Charles Krauthammer to an essay titled “The end of Time.” The end of time, if you care to check it.

And these two essays seemed representative of the end of something. Fukuyama’s vision the end of the world of his generation when its vision of “time” consisted exclusively of contention between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. Nothing more.

Likewise Pinker’s essay seemed to mark the end of a generation. A generation awakened by a masterful world shaman who quickly receding with this phrase: “Imagine there’s no heaven . . . no country . . . no religion too.” It brought the experience of what the Taoists call wu chi: The world between the end of the last world and the beginning of the next world. A world of relative peace got by stasis. This was Bill Clinton’s world and this was his generation’s fulfillment.

And now we are at the end of that as well. Obama was never really part of it. He only patronized it and accommodated it as best he could. But if the Democrats are to bring the century forward with Obama they will leave the Clinton generation behind. And if the Republicans are to bring the generations forward Mitt Romney will do it with the Reagan/Bush generation. So whichever case, the world begins again in 2012.

In contrast with visionaries like Pinker and Fukuyama, Wesley K. Clark seems a practical cat. In his essay in The Hill this morning he writes: “And after a decade or more focusing on ground combat in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, that requires shifting at the margins our resourcing and attention to air and sea and the Asia-Pacific. This is precisely the strategy recently articulated by the Department of Defense and endorsed by our nation’s uniformed military leaders.”

Clark’s essay brings us the world as it is and as it will be now. A world in time again. And this is where the generations will start again. As I understand it, Clark is an advisor to President Obama. The President would do well to bring him in, potentially replacing Joe Biden as Vice President. Obama has paid his debt to the generations and should let them go now and start again. No better place to start a second time than with General Clark.

Thursday, February 02, 2012

Mark Zuckerberg’s Nerd Manifesto

by Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 2/2/12

Mark Zuckerberg presses himself into the public eye. It was his insistence and demanding countenance that first brought to my mind those ancient socialist realist statues of Lenin pressing forward against the wind, oversized, waving a bronzed document, almost a hundred years ago in the century’s first great wave – worldwide wave – of “new man” generational politics. It came then from the realization that they simply had the numbers. Capital had already fled Russia. Russian gentry were now waiters in Paris and all was left were peasants; comrades then, millions upon millions of them. And the document: The three-page, single-spaced letter that Zuckerberg had prepared; a letter to potential investors for a $5 billion initial public offering of Facebook. It was a manifesto:

We live at a moment when the majority of people in the world have access to the internet or mobile phones — the raw tools necessary to start sharing what they’re thinking, feeling and doing with whomever they want. Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries. . . There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future.

But the key was in the urgency of his voice before the microphones: They had the numbers. Not so many as Borodin would have in Russia and China when he put them together, but they were getting there. And the legitimacy of the vision came from that: There are more of us. And we will change you: We will change government, we will change what you buy, we will change your life and who you are. But Trotsky was a better writer. Here, from his defense of the October Revolution:

It is true that humanity has more than once brought forth giants of thought and action, who tower over their contemporaries like summits in a chain of mountains. The human race has a right to be proud of its Aristotle, Shakespeare, Darwin, Beethoven, Goethe, Marx, Edison, and Lenin. But why are they so rare? Above all, because almost without exception, they came out of the upper and middle classes. Apart from rare exceptions, the sparks of genius in the suppressed depths of the people are choked before they can burst into flame.

The agitprop was breathtaking:

Anthropology, biology, physiology and psychology have accumulated mountains of material to raise up before mankind in their full scope the tasks of perfecting and developing body and spirit. Psycho-analysis, with the inspired hand of Sigmund Freud, has lifted the cover of the well which is poetically called the “soul”. And what has been revealed? Our conscious thought is only a small part of the work of the dark psychic forces. Learned divers descend to the bottom of the ocean and there take photographs of mysterious fishes. Human thought, descending to the bottom of its own psychic sources must shed light on the most mysterious driving forces of the soul and subject them to reason and to will.

Say what you like but fearless they were to a flaw and would shake the world in 10 days. Facebook, basically a Yellow Pages for kids, will take longer.

Trotsky’s famous phrase was repeated often; Everyman a Plato, Lincoln, a Marx. But maybe we have reached the end of the cycle as we find the Everyman today a Newt, a Maynard G. Krebs, a Donald, a Lady Gaga.

Profile

Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning magazine writer and has worked more than 30 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and book, movie, music and art reviewer. His essays on politics and world affairs have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and other newspapers and magazines. He has published poetry in Painted Bride Quarterly and has written dozens of magazine articles. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He has written hundreds of columns for "Pundits Blog" in "The Hill" a political journal in Washington, D.C. He lives in the White Mountains with his wife and four children.